Meccano Steam Engine (Mamod for Meccano)

Exhibit
Meccano Steam Engine (Mamod for Meccano) (i)
location:
Arch Two , Area 4 Meccano Construction Sets (display) 1965 - 1979

1975 promotional image [image info]

1978: Meccano motor range. including the Steam Engine [image info]

A black and silver-coloured horizontal "Meccano Steam Engine" power plant produced by Mamod for Meccano Ltd. from 1965-1979 for powering Meccano models, with yellow punched mounting-baseplate and its original (dark blue) box (with its original tied-on factory safety tag).

The unit burns methylated spirits, and has a single-cylinder mechanism with a flywheel, on a shaft that also has a small gearwheel and a chain drive wheel for powering further hardware.

The box legend says: "Steam Engine with reverse, fitted to drive gears, chains and pulleys".

1970: Meccano Steam Engine

Meccano Limited and Mamod

These engines were made for Meccano by Mamod, and were originally just referred to as the Meccano Steam Engine (which is how they were described on the boxes). However, users found the lack of a model number frustrating, and the engines ended up being referred to generally as the MEC1.

After Meccano stopped selling the engines Mamod started producing a revised version, the Mamod SP3. The SP3 had a number of tweaks over the MEC1, the main functional difference being the use of a solid fuel burner instead of a meths burner. Visually, the immediate obvious difference was that the Meccano-spacing-punched baseplate on the SP3 was now light grey rather than "Meccano yellow", to distinguish it from the previous "officially Meccano" version.

External links

• Mamod Meccano steam engines (rolywilliams.com)
• Mamod Meccano steam engines (mikes-steam-engines.co.uk)
• Meccano Steam Engine (MEC1) (nzmeccano.com)
• Mamod/Meccano SP3 Restoration (smokstak.com)